But looking back, the prepaid card model is actually an unavoidable marketing method, because if the prepaid card activities are well planned, it can really bring rich benefits to businesses.
It can be seen that the marketing activities of prepaid cards are a double-edged sword. If used well, it can bring good marketing effect to merchants. If it is not used well, it will be looked down upon by customers.
1. What are the benefits of the marketing activities of prepaid cards?
To put it bluntly, as long as the recharge card can be well planned and prepared, it can bring qualitative improvement to the business of the merchants.
First, it can "link" customers for a long time and increase customer stickiness.
Compared with other marketing activities, prepaid card marketing can make customers pay in advance through the temptation of making profits, which is also an effective marketing method today. After all, most people are greedy for cheap. Moreover, the merchants have money to recharge here. With ideas, consumers will increase their consumption frequency invisibly.
Second, quickly recover funds, improve the speed of capital turnover and capital utilization.
The most important thing in doing business is cash flow. If your cash flow is good, even if your debt is high, don't worry too much, because as long as healthy cash flow flows normally, you don't have to worry about business failure. Just like many group companies and listed companies, the debt ratio is high, but the business has enough cash flow support to maintain huge business operations. So it is difficult to do business without enough funds. Recharged cards are the best way to recover funds quickly. Not only can you recover the investment in opening a store in a short time, but if the carefully planned scheme is attractive, you can quickly realize profit through the funds of prepaid cards.
Third, redundant balance, picking up sleeping funds for nothing.
To put it bluntly, after most customers recharge their cards, the balance in the cards will hardly be spent, and more or less a part of the balance will be idle. Therefore, these idle funds are sleeping funds, which naturally become the disposable balance of merchants and belong to additional pure profit income. If the customer recharges the money, if he never comes to spend or seldom comes, then the money is equivalent to taking an interest-free loan, isn't it? This fund is for you to use in advance, and there is no interest!
Give a chestnut:
If you open a restaurant, you will launch a recharge membership card with a minimum recharge amount of 500 yuan. If the balance is insufficient, customers need to recharge again. Similarly, the lowest recharge threshold is 500 yuan, so let's calculate, as long as your restaurant is properly managed, tastes good, meets the hygiene standards, and customers like to eat, the balance of the customer's recharge membership card will give customers an attractive discount on the last consumption. If the balance in the customer's card is not enough for customers to continue to recharge, customers can get a new recharge.
When your membership base is large enough, the remaining balance of your store's recharge and dormant funds will be very considerable.
Second, how many businesses can't do the marketing of prepaid cards well?
It is not so hard to implement prepaid card marketing as it is because of three cognitive misunderstandings of many small and medium-sized businesses:
The first misunderstanding: customers boycott prepaid cards?
So, first of all, do you have any friends who have recharged their membership cards in the barber shop? How many/much?
Most people really don't like to pay, but that doesn't mean customers don't want to pay to recharge. This is a cognitive misunderstanding.
The second misunderstanding: customers don't trust the news that businesses are running away?
There are indeed many black sheep businesses that disappeared overnight because of poor management, and these businesses also blackened the overall business atmosphere of business integrity.
When the customer feels that the money of the merchant is not safe enough, of course, he is unwilling to pay for the recharge. So how to dispel the concerns and doubts of the customer and give the customer a sense of security is the key.
The third misunderstanding: what I do is not suitable for recharging the card?
There are no unsold goods, only unsold salespeople. As long as it is not a one-time transaction (such as buying a house ……), others can generally operate the recharge marketing activities, but the planning scheme and details of the recharge card are quite different, so it should be customized according to the characteristics of the industry and the target customers.
The fourth misunderstanding: We are such a small store, can we still promote prepaid card activities?
Everything is done by human efforts. The size of the store has nothing to do with whether it can be used as a recharge card. The store itself doesn't mean anything, but the boss is the key.
3. What minefields do you often touch in the marketing of prepaid cards?
Minefield 1: The charging threshold is set too high.
The rules of top-up cards can't be worked out by patting your head with a brainwave. Why do some stores charge 100, while others charge two or three thousand? In fact, everyone hopes that customers can collect more money in the store, but if your threshold is set too high, it will scare away many interested consumers.
Assuming that the per capita consumption of a restaurant is only 50 yuan, which is similar to that of 60 yuan, and the threshold for introducing prepaid cards is 2,000 yuan, naturally not many customers are willing to pay the bill. Think about how many times you have to eat there before you finish. !
Minefield 2: The discount is not attractive enough.
"If you can't give up your child, you can't make a wolf." If your account is recharged with 100 yuan to send 12 yuan, it's just a 8.8 discount. How many people are still interested?
Minefield 3: Too boring, too single form.
When it comes to recharge card marketing, the most common way is recharge discount or recharge rebate. It is rare to see other preferential schemes. Now businesses from all walks of life are learning to do this, which is obviously nothing special. As a result, the marketing of prepaid cards has fallen into a painful price war, attracting customers to their stores to do cards is much more affordable than who gives them.
Minefield 4: Practical Problems in Landing
This problem is likely to be ignored at ordinary times. When your recharge marketing plan is determined, how to start the work? Shall we put up posters or train waiters and salespeople? Is there a set of standard procedures, such as when to ask customers to apply for cards, how much to recommend customers to recharge, and what level of prepaid cards will be more acceptable?
Fourth, what can I do to give full play to the benefits of prepaid cards?
1. Recharge design-lowering the entry threshold and draining.
When planning the threshold of prepaid cards, merchants should fully combine these key elements, such as target consumer groups, customer unit price range, and their own brand positioning.
According to past experience, it is reasonable and ideal that the range of entry-level recharge cards introduced by merchants is about 3-6 times of the average customer unit price. Assuming that the per capita consumption is in cinemas around 60 yuan, then the primary threshold of prepaid cards is almost appropriate around 300 yuan; Assuming that the average consumption per table in a restaurant is within 200 yuan, the initial threshold of a prepaid card is almost 800- 1000 yuan.
The next step is hierarchical and hierarchical. Usually, it will be multiplied by a factor of about 2 times. Assume that the first level is 100 yuan, and the second level can derive 200 or 300.
2. Provide-optimize income
Take a chestnut as an example, which is also a discount of 10 points. 2000 is given to 200, and 10% is given to 2000. Which scheme is better for businesses?
When the customer prepays 2000 yuan as a gift to 200 yuan, then the customer can spend 2200 yuan here.
If the customer recharges 2000 yuan for 10% discount, we assume that the customer spends twice, and the same consumption amount is calculated as 2200 yuan. First consumption 1000 yuan, actually paid to 900 yuan after discount, prepaid balance 1200 yuan. If I buy 1.300 yuan again, I will actually pay1.654,38+0.70 yuan after the discount. It can be seen that the discount is cheap.
Of course, in addition to the magic of careful amount planning, it is not recommended to use the marketing method of recharge and discount too much. Once there are too many discount activities, it will do great harm to the long-term value of the brand and is not conducive to establishing a good image in the hearts of consumers.
3. Recharge scheme-make it more attractive.
First of all, you can look at the recharge activities around you for reference.
A. Call fee refund: the most commonly used recharge activities of the three major telecom operators, how much to send first, and then return it to you in a few months. The purpose of this is to extend your use time and dilute the discount amount, so that you can't pay enough every month and make up for it little by little.
Many of our merchants use this model for reference and launch this kind of card recharge activities, such as deposit 1000 for you 1000, giving the customer an account for the first time 100, and returning the rest to the store for 9 months at a monthly rate of 100 yuan. Naturally, every month, customers can regularly remind customers of their consumption experience and store experience by getting a warm reminder of the amount of gifts. And because it is divided into many cycles to share, in fact, the real cost paid by the merchants is far lower than the gift amount of 1000 yuan.
B, package package Mika: This kind of card is often suitable for service-oriented businesses such as beauty shops and fitness clubs. For example, you can enjoy an imported brand of beauty products and enjoy 12 free professional services with a first charge of 5899 yuan. Now this kind of scheme can often be seen in automobile service providers, such as fine car washing and waxing+interior cleaning, which provides value-added and extra gift services every time.
You can refer to what industry you belong to. If your product or service can also refer to this kind of overall packaging, you can also design a package-style activity plan that is different from pure cash recharge.
C. Free of charge: it is a transformation of recharge rebate. This scheme is the most direct and effective way to stimulate customers to pay for the first time. For example, eating a meal in a restaurant costs almost several hundred yuan at a time. If you recharge your membership card on the same day, the two most expensive dishes in this order can be free. If you send another dish, you can taste it for free next time. Most customers will find it worthwhile.
D. Gift card: This kind of gift card is often introduced in large shopping malls. Some merchants directly make it into a delivery card, and then there will be a corresponding discount recovery policy, which will lead to net profit income if it falls invisibly.
For example, during the Chinese New Year holiday, some five-star hotels may print millions of mooncake gift certificates, but in fact, how many customers come to buy these mooncakes? Many people have never even seen a mooncake box when the mooncake gift certificate of one or two thousand yuan is recycled.
Similar tobacco and liquor stores, luxury art monopoly, etc. , there are such activities similar to marketing card vouchers.
4. Practice is very important-make charging more natural.
When you design a subtle recharge marketing plan, you need to pay attention to the implementation of the actual operation. What do your shop assistants say and do when they recommend recharging to customers? Can it effectively improve the customer acceptance rate, or will it make customers refuse easily?
For example, when can I propose to the customer that I can apply for a recharge card? Is it necessary for the clerk to always strongly recommend this card to customers and explain the benefits of handling this card? And what kind of recharge plan cards are recommended for different types of consumer customers? Wait, these details are also important.
5. Solve the ultimate pain point-let customers recharge more safely.
In the implementation of top-up marketing plan, there is actually another link that is often overlooked, that is, how to improve customer experience and goodwill. The goodwill of the customer experience determines the difficulty of making a recharge decision in the customer's mind, and whether the customer strongly recommends you or spits you out when telling friends and relatives later.
As mentioned above, the most feared thing for customers to recharge their credit cards is that the store will run away. If the charged money is sent to Shui Piao, not only will they not get preferential treatment, but they will also give the principal to unscrupulous merchants to run away. So in our ordinary shop, you should focus on solving the problem of customer trust. After all, small shops are not big brands or chain stores, so it is normal for customers to have concerns. To reassure customers, you have to convince them of your boss! As a living individual, the boss is the best way to close the distance between customers. How to build your own personal brand is particularly important! Sometimes the shop is just a cold and impersonal objective existence, and if the boss's personal image is shaped with temperature and affinity, giving the customer the feeling of being an old friend around him, it can give the customer a sense of security invisibly. I have met many bosses, and they have done a very good job in opening stores. Without exception, bosses are especially good at being human and making friends with customers. Over time, customers often patronize because they like the boss very much.
Now WeChat is a very good social tool to show yourself, build a personal brand and close the relationship with customers. Business owners, in particular, can't just use these social tools as tools for friends and family to chat. Nowadays, many prescient bosses have created a colorful circle of friends, which makes customers have the desire to browse every day. Then, if you are in a traditional store business, can you actively add these customers' WeChat on the condition of sending some practical and valuable small gifts, and then cultivate these customers on WeChat to let customers know more about you, thus generating trust and goodwill for you? After cultivating customers' goodwill and trust, is it easier to promote the recharge of these customers through a wave of recharge card activities on some holidays than to personally push the recharge membership card?